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Number   :  1083
Date     :  2001-11-30
Author   :  JimmyJet
Subject  :  My backup routine
Size(KB) :  2


Greetings.

First of all, XXCopy is an excellent program, and I congratulate Pixielab on
its configurability.

Now, the issue: I make a weekly backup of my hard drive to a removable hard
drive once a week, and then take that hard drive to another location. (Why
it's important to know this comes later... and I do it because if I left the
drive in the computer all the time, it would be susceptible to theft, or
fire/other catastrophe... in my opinion keeping backups off-site is
important). I use this command line, just for reference:

xxcopy c:\ d:\ /CLONE /Xc:\mp3s\*\* /PB /oAc:\bupfull.log
(clone C to D, ignore my MP3s directory, give me a progress bar, and append
results to a log file)

What I'd like to do is make daily incremental backups of changed files.
Since the original target disk is no longer present, I can't use the default
date/time check to determine if a file needs to be backed up, so I choose to
use the /M switch to back up files with the archive attribute set (I know
it's not perfect, but it's good enough for daily backups). I tried using:

xxcopy c:\* c:\bak\/$MON-DD$\ /s /M /Xc:\mp3s\*\* /CCY /IA
/oAc:\bupdaily.log
(copy everything on c: to a folder in c:\bak named uniquely for today,
include subdirs, only get new files, ignore the MP3s dir, ignore the target
folder, don't run if target folder already exists, log results to a file)

but then I get the error message:
"""""""""""""""""""
Detected a cyclic copy (the source includes the destination).
======= XXCOPY ========================
You have selected a command switch which is designed
primarily for users with a Corporate Site License.
To suppress this, place the license file (XXCOPY.LIC)
in the same directory as the XXCOPY executable.
"""""""""""""""""""

Huh? I've seen nothing in the documentation about restricted command line
switches. And I'm definitely not a corporate user, just a guy with one home
computer trying to keep good backups. Any ideas? The message above does let
me press a key to carry on, but I want these to run at night while I sleep,
without requiring interaction. I tries removing the command line switches
from the line above one at a time, starting with /IA, and /CCY, but it
wasn't until I removed the macro to name the unique folder that the message
went away. I really like the "new folder for each day" thing, because it
offers better utility to be able to get a frequently-used file from a
specific day, not to just have access to "the most recent one backed up".

By the way, if anyone wants to very cheaply do the removable drive thing, it
can be done for less than US$100. You can get a removable hard drive tray
and cartridge for $8 from Compgeeks
(http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=GN210), and a cheap IDE hard
drive from anywhere (including Compgeeks). Works like a champ! I have two of
these for rotating backups. One drive is big enough to handle the whole
drive, but the other one is small, which is why I drop out my MP3 directory
as above.



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